Refrigerated cooling systems are commonly found in refrigerated vending machines and beverage coolers. Beverage coolers are small refrigerated units commonly found in convenience stores near check out aisles and high traffic areas. Growing in popularity, one of the most common uses of beverage coolers can be providing patrons with immediate access to cold beverages in the front of the store, remote areas, or other high traffic areas.
Some early beverage cooler models kept beverages cold by packing the beverages in ice. Throughout the day and at high frequency, the ice that had melted required the store clerk to drain the cooler and refill it with more ice. In many stores there are few desirable ways to drain a cooler full of ice water without making a mess. The store clerk had to either use a hose and bucket to remove the melted ice water, provide drains in the store floor, or roll the cooler outside to drain the cooler in the street or on the grounds around the store.
Other problems with early cooler technology often included requiring the customer to reach into a basin of ice and water to retrieve a beverage. This left the customer with cold wet hands, and a store clerk with a wet store floor.
An advance in beverage cooler technology has seen the addition of cooling system technology to reduce the need for large quantities of ice, and frequent cooler draining. In most cases the addition of a cooling system slows the ice melting process.
Though cooling systems can adequately cool beverages without the need for ice it can be desirable in certain situations not to eliminate the ice from the cooler. Marketing sensitivities and trends may indicate, and customers may enjoy, opening the cooler to retrieve that "ice-cold" beverage. In the case where a cooling system is used in combination with ice a desirable reduction in the amount of melted ice can be realized. This reduction of melted ice is cost effective in both ice and store clerks time by decreasing the number of occurrences in a given day the cooler must be drained.
Refrigerated cooling systems with or without the use of ice, and whether in vending machines or beverage coolers are prone to frost and freeze-up. Freeze-up is a condition where frost and or ice build up on cooling system components. As frost and or ice build up the efficiency of the cooling system diminishes until a condition exists where the temperature set by the temperature control thermostat can not be realized. In this case the cooling system continuously runs potentially causing damage to the cooling system itself.
Once freeze-up occurs the cooling system can no longer adequately or properly operate. As frost and or ice build up on cooling system components the efficiency of the cooling system diminishes. To compensate for the reduction in efficiency the cooling system runs longer and longer to try to maintain the desired refrigerated temperature. As a result electrical power consumption required by the cooling system steadily increases.
Increased electrical power consumption increases the cost of operating a vending machine or beverage cooler. A priority, Industry wide (refrigeration and vending industries) is to reduce operational electrical power consumption required by cooling systems.
Due to a number of factors including a small compartment size and a high frequency of beverage cooler lid openings, the beverage cooler can be subject to a higher frequency of freeze-ups then other refrigerated systems.
It is these deficiencies and shortcoming with current cooling systems commonly found in refrigerators, vending machines, and beverage coolers that gives rise to the present invention.